


Caesura

by frostandcrow



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, No Character Development, just Rita as the best sort of medicine, no major plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 00:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18021665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostandcrow/pseuds/frostandcrow
Summary: Missing hospital scene from Juno Steel and the Soul of the People Part 2, or, alternatively, the origin of Rita’s no-shop-talk-while-suffering-from-broken-bones rule.





	Caesura

**Author's Note:**

> There is precisely zero redeeming value to this fic. I just needed more Rita + Juno non-case-related interludes in my life.

Rita’s heels clicked dully as she made her way through one of Hyperion General’s medical wards, its walls bearing faded floral wallpaper that was at least fifty years old, passing nurses and doctors who seemed to have that same world-weary exhaustion as her boss that came from continuing to fight a losing battle against a system that did it’s best to depersonalize the people who came to them for help. Hyperion General might not have been the fanciest hospital in the city, but it was…comfortable, in a way. Compared to some of the other hospitals Juno had been admitted to through the years—and Rita was considering writing a travel guide to Hyperion’s various medical establishments as she’d become quite familiar with most of them by this point—the chairs weren’t as cushy, the monitors weren’t as large, and the floors weren’t as polished, but the visiting hours were barely a suggestion, the doctors didn’t seem to care what neighborhood their patient had come from, and half the time they could convince Juno to stay almost as long as he needed to. Those factors were definitely more important, in her opinion.

(Though, it was a bit of a shame about the size of the monitors in the patient rooms.)

She walked up to the nurses’ station where an elderly woman was typing listlessly at a computer.

“Hi!” she chirped, “I’m lookin’ for Mista'’ Steel’s room?”

Without looking up, the nurse made a few clicks. “He expecting you?” she asked, tone bored.

“I figure at this point, he usually does.”

“Uh-huh.” She made a few more clicks. “It looks like he’s in…oh.”

“Oh?”

“You’re looking for Juno’s room?” She looked up at Rita for the first time, “And you’re his…?”

“Secretary!”

“I…see…” She studied Rita for a moment before seeming to reach a conclusion. “He’s right this way, I’ll walk you over.”

“That sure is nice of you, but you look busy. I can probably find it on my own if you just give me the room number or a map or somethin’ like that.”

“No, I need to check on him anyway,” she said, grabbing a small plastic baggie from what looked like a pneumatic tube. It looked like it contained several syringes. “Annie’s his nurse and she’s stuck helping 903 up to the commode, so she’s gonna be tied up for a while and we finally got his dose of Voltoren up from the pharmacy.”

“‘Voltoren? That sounds pretty fancy. What’s that for?”

“It’s an antiemetic.”

“An anti- _what_ now?!?” she asked, outrage building as she followed the nurse into a room, “You listen here. Mista' Steel is a lot things, not all of them nice, but he certainly does not discriminate against anybody for their beliefs, or…or their other life choices so long as it don’t hurt nobody else!”

The nurse stopped and looked at Rita with a look of pure shock on her face, clearly at loss for words.

“She means it’s a nausea pill, Rita,” said Juno from the bed.

“Oh. Then why didn’t she just say that?”

“I’m sorry, miss, it’s just…”

“…no one has ever made that leap of logic before. Don’t worry about it, it’s just Rita,” Juno said tiredly, sparing the nurse from further attempts at explanation.

“I think you mean ‘it’s Rita,’ boss,” she said as she walked past the still shell-shocked nurse to take a seat in the plastic chair at his bedside. “Ain’t nothin’ ‘just’ about me.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Rita saw the nurse shake her head slightly before walking to Juno’s other side. “I have your medication, Mr Steel. The doctor said this one should be more tolerable.”

Juno just grunted in acknowledgment.

Rita, who was expecting a ready quip along the lines of “Oh, well then I’m glad he didn’t chose to start with this one, then” or “Does he give the bad medication to everyone or just me?” looked more closely at her boss. On first glance, when she had first walked into the room, he had appeared to be resting comfortably. Now that she looked closer, Rita saw the marked pallor and clamminess of his skin, the stiff way he held his body as if any motion at all would be intolerable, the shallow and measured breathing, and his persistently closed eye. In a word, he looked haggard. She would even say that he looked worse now than when she’d accompanied him to the hospital yesterday. Something uncomfortable twisted in her gut.

“Wait. Whaddya mean ‘more tolerable’? What are you guys doin’ ta Mista' Steel?”

“Rita…” Juno growled warningly.

“Well,” the nurse said slowly, clearly choosing her words carefully, “We didn’t know he was also suffering from recent radiation exposure and the medication we gave him last night for pain is contraindicated in that setting, so…”

“So?” Rita asked, not liking where this was going.

“So, he…had a rough night.”

“How rough?”

“I spent all night puking, okay Rita?” Juno answered, a hint of his usual exasperated tone detectable through the fatigue.

She had been present during his admission yesterday afternoon, after the ambulance had finally made it into Newtown, and had been there when the doctor had gone over all of the things they were treating. Notable among that list were his rib fractures. She wasn’t a doctor and hadn’t ever broken a bone, much less multiple bones at once, but it didn’t take four years of medical school to know that vomiting with rib fractures would be excruciating.

She couldn’t help but ask, “So the drug that was supposed to make the pain better made it worse? Seems like a pretty dumb mistake to make to me.”

“I’m so sorry.” To her credit, the nurse did sound sincere. Given how miserable Juno currently looked, Rita would bet even the most cynical, burned-out nurse in the hospital would feel some sympathy for the guy. “I’m sure if Dr Mercedes had known about the recent radiation exposure, he wouldn’t have prescribed it.” She turned to address Juno, though Rita doubted he appreciated this with his eye still closed. “This medication _should_ work. Also, the doctor wanted to try this new pain medication that should be a bit nicer to your stomach than the last one. It works well for our radiation burn patients, so it shouldn’t cause any more nausea in you. We don’t generally use it first-line because it causes more constipation than the other pain meds typically do, but…I don’t think that’ll be too much of an issue for you at the moment…”

“Yeah, whatever, it’s fine,” he said quickly, cutting her off. Rita noticed a tinge of color in his cheeks.

She twisted the syringe of medication to the IV in the cook of his elbow and slowly depressed the plunger and then repeated the process with a second syringe. She then bustled around, disposing of the syringe, checking the bag of clear fluids hanging above Juno’s head, taking note of his vital signs, and then leaving after reassuring him that he should feel better soon and that he or Rita should push the call light if they needed anything else.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Rita watching as the tension in his face slowly dissipated, before she started to fidget restlessly.

“Rita…” Juno warned, finally opening his eye to fix her with a mild glare.

She flashed him one of her brilliant grins. “Feelin’ better?”

“Not gonna lie, Rita, that’s a pretty low bar to beat.” He shut his eye again and shifted carefully in bed.

“So. Radiation sickness, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there a reason you didn’t tell anyone about that? Includin’ me?”

“No. I just…The worst of the nausea had passed before I even went into the sewers. I didn’t think it was relevant. I’m not a doctor, dammit.”

“Pro’ly for the best. You have a terrible bedside manner, boss.”

“Only because I practice.”

They lapsed into silence again, punctuated by the soft rustle of stiff sheets as Juno shifted carefully again.

“You comfy, boss? Need me ta raise the head of the bed? Or— _oh_! What about some water? I dunno about you, but vomiting makes me awful thirsty and the taste that just seems to linger in your mouth, y’know? Just awful and seems to take _gallons_ of water to wash away, so sometimes I drink something bubbly and lemony instead, like that Spritzly’s Lemon Spritzer! They have this cranberry version, and, I gotta tell ya boss, it makes the perfect party drink when you combine it with—“

“Rita, I’m fine.”

“That’s a pretty bold lie, Mista' Steel. Then again, I’m not sure you really know the definition of ‘fine,’ so I guess I can’t really hold it against you.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He shifted again, his left arm reaching over to carefully readjust the position of his right arm in its sling. “While you’re here, were you able to look into the Newto—“

“Oh no boss, I’m gonna stop ya right there. You know the rule: no working when ya got broken bones.”

  
“What?” he asked, eye snapping back open to look at her incredulously. “That’s not a rule.”

“Well, it is now. Shoulda been a rule a long time ago, but sometimes it takes Rita a while to come up with some of her most brilliant solutions.”

Juno just groaned in irritation. “Brilliant solution? I don’t need _bones_ to investigate at the moment, Rita.”

“Yeah, yeah, but you do need rest, boss. And I mean all of you, not just the bone parts.”

Juno made a frustrated sound of defeat and slumped into the mattress. Rita didn’t expect for him to give in that easily. She hoped it was from the effects of the medicine he just got.

“ _Oh_! I know what we can do! We can get you all caught up with _Of_ _Vice_ _and_ _Men_!”

“All caught up…? Rita, I saw _one_ season of that show _five_ _years_ _ago_.”

“So? That means that ya got a lot to get caught up on! And I remember that you liked it.”

“Liked it? I was drugged to my _eyeballs_ with antibiotics and cough syrup and you forced me to watch it. I was basically Stockholm’d by the third episode!”

 _Bingo_ , thought Rita as some of the color returned to Juno’s face.

“Exactly. Except, in retrospect, I guess you were sicker than I thought ‘cause we definitely didn’t travel to any Earth city during that time, but otherwise, I’m still right and you definitely liked it. For your definition of ‘like.’ Which, I guess can be easily mistaken by anyone else for ‘irritation’ and ‘disdain,’ but at this point, I’m pretty much an expert in interpreting your flavors of gruffness.”

“My _flavors_ of _gruffness_?”

“I mean, sure, sometimes, you transition to ‘facetious smart aleck’, but your base setting is definitely ‘irascible grump.’”

“Okay. We’re going to have to talk about banning thesauruses from the office.”

“Yeah, yeah, no more dinos in the office. I’ve been saying that for years. I’m not sure why you’re suddenly agreeing with me or why you’re changin’ the topic, but it ain’t gonna work. Nothin’ can distract me from _V &M_ and lucky for you, there’s a marathon goin’ on right now and I don’t want you to get more behind than you already are!”

Deciding that the argument was over, she reached over Juno to grab the remote to flip on the stream. He shifted uncomfortably a couple more times during the first half of the episode, but, by the end credits, he was sleeping soundly, soft snores punctuating the show’s occasional dramatic silences.

A bit later, a man in a wrinkled white coat with a recent-looking coffee stain near the lapel walked in.

Rita had met enough doctors over the years to have learned that the majority of them were absolutely oblivious to anything going on in the room—she’d once watched a doctor talk for five minutes at one of Juno’s hospital roommates before the poor guy had finally pointed out to the doctor that he was currently sitting on the bedside commode and would the doctor please come back when he’d finished?—so she was quick to head off any absentminded actions that would disturb Juno’s rest by quietly pointing out, “He’s sleeping.”

The doctor, who looked tired yet kind, quietly replied, “Oh, that’s good to see. I was told he didn’t get any sleep last night.” He checked his electronic tablet and then a couple of things around Juno’s bed including the bag of clear fluids hooked up to his IV and the screen displaying Juno’s vital signs. Then, he crouched down to look at something…under Juno’s bed?

  
“Whatcha lookin’ at down there, doc?”

“Oh, just his Foley bag.” He stood up and held aloft a clear plastic bag with brown liquid in it. There was a clear plastic tube—also containing brown liquid—that was attached to the bag and that snaked beneath Juno’s covers.

Thanks to her streams—she didn’t often watch a lot of medical-themed ones, but sometimes there was nothing better on—she knew what a Foley catheter was and felt a wince of sympathy as she realized where the other end of that tube was located. “But…why is his urine brown?”

To Rita’s pleasant surprise, he walked closer to her so he could keep his voice lowered. “For some reason that I’m afraid isn’t quite clear, he’s suffering from rhabdomyolysis—muscle breakdown. He said he’d done a lot of…running?…prior to admission?”

“Yeah, I guess you could say that. And ramming through heavy, locked doors,” she added helpfully. Rita thought back to how much faster and stronger Juno had been under the Soul’s control and supposed it shouldn’t have been surprising that there would be repercussions from that enhanced strength. “Is the damage gonna be permanent, doc?”

“It shouldn’t be. He’ll be a bit sore for a while and I recommend that he not do anything strenuous for the next several weeks. He had a bit of kidney damage and his electrolytes are a bit off, but those are improving so we’re going to continue aggressive IV fluids for a while.”

Rita knew there were rules about medical privacy and confidentiality, but it was amazing how much you could learn about a patient’s status just by sitting at someone’s bedside. That was the other thing about doctors: if you weren’t their patient, most of them didn’t really care who you were as long as the patient didn’t seem too distressed with you being there. And they assumed that the patient was okay with you hearing their medical information. “What about his shoulder?” she asked, taking advantage of the doctor’s talkativeness. She figured that given she was the one who generally filled out her boss’s medical forms anyway, those rules probably didn’t apply to her.

“I’m going to have a surgeon come evaluate him in the morning; he tore a few ligaments in addition to the multiple fractures, so I want to get their opinion about whether Mr Steel will need surgery or not.” He tapped at his tablet again and said, “I’ll come back to see him later this evening after he’s woken up,” and then walked out.

Rita, not surprised by the sudden exit, went back to watching her streams. A different nurse from before—Annie, Rita assumed—came in and quietly replaced the empty IV bag with a fresh one, hit a couple of buttons on the pump, and then left just as silently.

The majority of the day passed in a similar fashion: Juno asleep, Rita engrossed in her streams and snacks, and the occasional nurse visit.

As evening arrived, Juno was startled awake by the loud knock of the person delivering his dinner. He groaned and rubbed his eye groggily as Rita rearranged the bedside table so she could place his food in front of him. Thankfully, it looked like the type of food that would sit best in a a queasy stomach including, she noted with a bit of smug satisfaction, a small can of Spritzly’s.

“Ugh…what is this?”

“It’s dinner, Mista' Steel! Looks like…soup and crackers and jello.”

He fumbled for the control that would raise the head of the bed up slightly. “It’s _hospital_ food,” he said with distaste.

“Well, _duh_. That is where we are.”

They both stared silently at the contents of the tray for a moment.

“You gonna eat, or what? I’ve been meanin’ to tell ya, you’re lookin’ skinnier than usual compared to before you went missin’.”

“Yeah, well, I wasn’t exactly spending that time at a spa.” He picked up his spoon. “God, I really hope this doesn’t make me spend another night puking.” He sighed resignedly and  started to eat, spooning soup clumsily with his left hand.

Rita sat back down and continued munching on the snacks she packed prior to leaving her apartment that morning. The two watched the stream in silence with varying amount of interest, as Juno made it through a couple of crackers, about half his soup, and—to Rita’s surprise—the entire cup of jello.

Annie walked in several minutes after Juno had finished.

“How was dinner?” she asked as she took the tray away.

“Almost edible.”

She smiled, clearly charmed in that way that some people seemed to be around Juno’s gruff personality that Rita chalked up to the over-romanticized, over-hyped “bad boy” vibe that she had to forgive others for attributing to her boss.

“How’s the nausea?”

“Fine.”

“And the pain? You’re almost due for the next dose of your medication.”

“Sure. Hit me.”

She smiled again but just as she turned to leave, Juno’s stomach made a loud rumble. “Uh, scratch that. I, uh, think I need to go to the bathroom first.”

“Mista' Steel, you got one of those bladder tube things in, y’know,” Rita reminded him.

He just fixed her with a look. Then it hit her.

“Oh— _oh_! Gotcha. Well, it’s about time I get goin’! It’s gettin’ close to your bedtime anyway—“

“—Rita, it’s only seven—“

“—and I gotta get my rest too, y’know! So, have a good night, try to get some sleep, don’t let ‘em give you anything that’ll make you puke, and I’ll see ya in the mornin’!”

She grabbed her bag and stood, gave her boss a peck on the forehead—mostly just to hear him grumble—and then left.

As she walked out into the hot Martian night, she couldn’t help but proudly think that, going by the bit of color her boss had regained in his cheeks by the time she’d left, not all medicines were found in pharmacies. And at least she had never made him puke (except that one time a while ago, but still).

She also made a bet with herself that within the next two days, he’d be crawling the walls to get out—damaged muscles and broken bones notwithstanding. She made a mental note to clear out her guest room in the meantime. After all, of their two apartments, hers was the one with jello.

**Author's Note:**

> I am the friendless Tumblr hermit @frostandcrow, but feel free to try to drag me into the more populated and social areas if you wish.


End file.
